


Love and Other Mission Anomalies

by t_fic (topaz), topaz, topaz119 (topaz)



Series: Mission Anomalies [1]
Category: Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011)
Genre: First Kiss, First Time, Hurt/Comfort, Kink Meme, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-08
Updated: 2012-02-18
Packaged: 2017-10-30 19:14:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/335141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/topaz/pseuds/t_fic, https://archiveofourown.org/users/topaz/pseuds/topaz, https://archiveofourown.org/users/topaz/pseuds/topaz119
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first step to solving an anomaly is identifying it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [this prompt](http://ghotocol-kink.livejournal.com/1494.html?thread=99286#t99286) at [ghotocol_kink](), the short version of which is: Hurt!Brandt with him and Ethan cut off from the rest of team and Ethan realizing that he has feelings for his teammate (which are reciprocated - happy ending, please!).
> 
> Hurt!Brandt is definitely hurt. Working on the happy ending--it's coming, swear!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All Ethan has to do is get to him.

It's been two hours since Brandt's cover was blown, ninety minutes since they lost contact with him, the cartel not destroying his earwig until after they let the team listen in on the "interrogation." Benji had had to stop once to throw up, but he'd kept triangulating the signal they were getting from the comms right up to the last second. As Ethan hits the final stretch of road before he's going to have to go straight up the side of the mountain, Benji's got Brandt's last known position pinpointed within six feet, he says. Jane's initiated contact and formally requested assistance from Delta Force. 

All Ethan has to do is get to him.

* * *

The last twenty feet are the kicker. The castle itself is carved out of the living rock of the Carpathians, a relic of the days of serf-driven labor when it didn't matter how long it might take or how many men died in the construction so long as the end result was impregnable. Thankfully, modern climbing gear trumps medieval megalomania, but the final ascent is over stone that spent close to a millennium under the water that had powered the fortress's mill. It's worn almost as smooth as glass and nothing Benji's got in his magic bag will work on rock. Ethan does it the old-fashioned way, pulling himself up inch by inch, the clock in his head ticking louder and louder, a second-by-second _gogogo_ punctuated by endless replays of the final, hideous noise torn from Brandt's throat just before the comms had gone down. Even if Delta Force is wrong and they're not just going in to recover a body, every second it takes Ethan to get in is another second Brandt has to hold out for and another second less likely that he can.

Ethan loses his grip once, skidding and tumbling six feet before his pinions hold and the rope snaps taut to break his fall. The adrenaline flooding through his system means he barely feels the wrench or the bruises from where he slams into the stone, only settles himself and starts again. They've picked this approach because it puts Ethan into the castle right above where Benji says Brandt was. None of them are thinking about how long the cartel has had to move him since they destroyed the signal Benji worked with. Ethan will cross that bridge if--not when--he comes to it. He hauls himself up the last foot, slipping over the wall and into the small courtyard with a grunt, and Benji is already cross-referencing his position with the rough blueprints they have of the castle. They're more sketches than anything, but it's what they have and it's only because William Brandt is a digital packrat who never met a file he couldn't archive that they even have that much.

"Ten degrees south-southwest," Benji murmurs. "Three meters and there should be a window." Ethan's moving before Benji's finished speaking. "Dorothy says she and Scarecrow are on the yellow brick road, five-by-five and waiting on your call." 

The plan is for the Nighthawks to hold off just over the border, not breaking Romanian airspace--and potentially starting a small war--until they know Ethan has Brandt and is ready for extraction. Ethan hopes the eleven minutes it will take the helicopters to reach the castle isn't eleven minutes too long, but it's the best they can do. He moves through the castle on Benji's say-so, turning corners and taking stairs at a dead run, the safety off on his Glock and an extra throwing knife tucked in along his calf. He'd watched the cartel pulling out of this location from across the valley, but that doesn't mean they left the place empty. It probably means that Brandt is long gone with them, but Ethan hadn't seen anyone that could have been Brandt, or anything that could have been used to carry him. Plus, the rough translations they'd gotten off the recordings of the interrogation (rough because Brandt is their languages guy and it's not helping Ethan at all to think that way) indicated that they didn't think Brandt is worth anything, so Ethan is betting everything that they left him here to die (not left him dead, Ethan thinks. Whatever that last thing had been, Brandt was still breathing, they'd all heard the painful rasp of breath before the earwig had been smashed.)

"Look sharp, you're nearly on top of it," Benji says, and Ethan slows down and starts opening doors along the long, stone-flagged passageway as quietly as he can. "Closer, closer..."

"X marks the spot," Ethan answers as he opens the last door before the corner and there's a figure in a chair. He can hear Benji's breath rush in and hold until Ethan can get close enough to see that it really is Will under the blood and grime and bruises. It takes another second to find the pulse at the base of his throat and then one more for Ethan to make his voice work long enough to say, "Confirmed. Confirmed. You got him, Benji. Dead solid perfect."

 _Go_ , Jane's saying, her voice strong and sure for all that Ethan can barely hear it over the surge of relief and adrenaline of seeing Will's eyes blink open, _go_. Right on top of Jane comes the pilot's confirmation--in that particular Special Forces tone that suggests invading sovereign nations with nothing more than a squad of men is routine-- _Tin Man, this is Scarecrow. We are inbound, ETA eleven minutes. Repeat, eleven minutes_ , and Ethan starts trying to figure out how he's going to get Will up to the courtyard in that time.

"Ethan." Will's closed his eyes again, as though he doesn't actually believe what he's seeing and can't expend the energy on a hallucination. Just for a second, Ethan is glad, because it gives him a little bit where he doesn't have to keep it together as he looks over everything they did to Will. By the time Will blinks again, Ethan's got his game-face on because if they're going to make it, Will is going to need every ounce of his considerable mental toughness. He absolutely does _not_ need to deal with Ethan being anything but focused on getting him out. "Seriously?" Will coughs. "Ethan?"

"Code name Tin Man," Ethan answers, summoning up a smirk from some well of determination he's tapped only once or twice in his life. Will laughs weakly, with a pained gasp at the end that registers as broken ribs to Ethan, but all he says is, "We were a little pressed for time; you can point and mock at our lame code names later."

"Just tell me I'm not Toto," Will says, playing along, but closing his eyes again.

"All right, I won't tell you that," Ethan deadpans, and Will snorts, ever so faintly. If nothing else, he's coherent. Ethan has no idea how, but he's not going to start questioning small miracles now. "Listen, Jane's on the way with the cavalry, but--"

"Yeah, this is a right fucking mess," Will says, which is about the understatement of the year. 

"That's one way of putting it," Ethan says, taking a deep breath because they have to get moving. "The good news is that they missed your femoral artery." 

"Yeah," Will breathes. "Figured that--haven't bled out yet. I can move my foot, a little--hurts like a sonofabitch, but I don't think the bone's broken either."

"Good," Ethan answers. "The bad news is that it's probably going to hurt worse coming out than it did going in."

"Yeah. Figured that, too." Will opens his eyes again, looking straight at Ethan, nothing but grim determination. "As much as I really don't want to do this, I'd rather not check out in his particular hell-hole, so let's get the party started, okay?" 

"Okay." Ethan makes himself look critically, assess what he's going to have to do and how he can get it done, and, jesus _fucking_ christ, he really wishes he'd gotten to shoot a couple of these animals in the face, because anybody who nails people to chairs with _railroad spikes_ doesn't deserve to go skipping off into the night. He clears his mind and focuses on the important thing, which is not how sweet a little payback in kind would be, but how he's going to get his agent the hell out of this mess. "I can--"

"Do it," Will says through gritted teeth and Ethan takes him at his word. It takes three strong pulls to work the spike out of the chair and his thigh; before Ethan finishes the first one, Will is spitting curses in Russian and German and what Ethan thinks is a dialect of Bulgarian. By the end of the third one, when the fucking thing finally slides free, the only reason Ethan's sure Will's still conscious is because he's rigid with pain. 

Ethan offers up a silent apology before he gets some pressure on the wound. He doesn't like the blood he's seeing but at least they're a tiny bit closer to getting out of the whole nightmare. 

_"Six minutes to exfil, Tin Man."_

"Copy," Ethan says, trying to decide how much more Will can take. "I don't know if we're going to make it up to the courtyard--my ops guy can guide you down--"

"Screw that," Will says, his eyes still closed but his mouth stubborn. "I can get that far." Ethan hesitates and Will starts to stand on his own, all his weight on his good leg. "Not checking out here, remember?" Ethan grabs him before he goes face-first onto the floor.

"Cancel that," Ethan radios. "We're moving." He gets a shoulder under Will's arm and starts for the door. "Anybody ever tell you you're a stubborn idiot?" 

"Am I supposed to take that as an insult?" Will gasps. "Coming from you and all?"

The doorway is narrow; it's impossible to get through it without jostling Will's leg and Ethan can feel him starting to gray out, more weight bearing down on Ethan.

"Brandt," Ethan says. "Will, hey, c'mon; stay with me. Talk to me."

"Yeah," Will pants, rallying. "Yeah, okay, talk. What about?"

"I don't know," Ethan answers, retracing the path back up to the courtyard as quickly as possible. "Tell me about where you grew up."

"Oh, fuck, no," Will grits out. "I'd rather have that fucking stake shoved back in my leg than talk about my old man."

"Gotcha," Ethan says, as they hit the bottom of the first staircase. "Future, then. Tell me what you're going to do after this."

"I'm going to goddamn well see if I can max out a Vicodin 'script--what do you _think_ I'm going to do after this?" 

"Seriously? You're going to fuck with the guy who's hauling your bleeding ass up castle steps?" Ethan's actually pretty happy to have Will bitching at him; the least he can do is keep up his part of this relationship they've forged. "Smooth, Brandt."

Given that his breath is shallowing with every step, Will manages a fairly impressive huff, but a couple of halting steps later, he murmurs, "Kilimanjaro." Ethan makes an encouraging noise as he maneuvers them up the last few, steeper stairs, taking more and more of Will's weight as they move. Will adds, "Which I'm assuming you've already summitted."

"No," Ethan says. There's one more door between them and the courtyard but Will's fading quickly. "I've never quite made it there."

"Got it all planned, just have to make the calls," Will whispers as they make it out into the open flagstone terrace. "I kind of figured on maybe a month to really get into shape, but that's--that's probably screwed for now."

"Might take more than a month," Ethan agrees. He braces Will against the wall and reaches for the IR marker clipped to his belt. He probably should drop it further out in the courtyard, but he kicks it out as far as he can and decides to deal with it later if the Nighthawks can't see it. Right now, he needs to look at Will's leg more. He eases Will off his feet, letting him slide down the wall. "Got anything else in mind?"

"There's a full solar eclipse later this year," Will answers, tracking Ethan more slowly than Ethan likes. "Landfall in Australia. Northern part."

"I have done that, and it's definitely worth the hassle," Ethan says, wrapping the last of his bandages around where Will's bled through everything else. "Brace yourself," he murmurs as he pulls them tight. 

"Mother _fuck_ ," Will groans, and Ethan wants to punch something, because he can already see the blood seeping through the new bandages. He strips off his overshirt and makes a pad, leaning down with as much pressure as he can. "Fuck, fuck, _fuck_ ; jesus, that fucking hurts."

"Sorry," Ethan tells Will. "Sorry, sorry." Will doesn't answer, but Ethan knows he hasn't lost consciousness, and he _is_ still breathing, so there's that at least. 

_"Tin Man, we are on our final approach, ETA two minutes. My boys want to know whether we can drop you a harness or--"_

"Negative," Ethan answers. "No way we'll be able to do that; right now my fist is the only thing keeping my guy from bleeding out." There's probably a better way to have said that, one that won't be freaking Benji and Jane out, but Ethan will just have to apologize to them later. 

"Copy that," the pilot says. "Hold tight." 

"Yeah," Ethan sighs, but he can hear them coming, the steady beat of the helicopter blades growing louder every second. So far, the direct pressure seems to be working; Will hasn't bled through the extra cloth, but Ethan knows it's got to be agony to have that much weight on the wound. Will hasn't said anything, though, just set his jaw and taken it. Ethan wants to be able to tell him to let go and check out, but every little bit of help he can give them while he's conscious is that much less time it's going to take to get him out.

The Nighthawks come storming up the valley, and it's been a long time since Ethan's seen anything as good as three attack helicopters flying in formation, coming for him. The already deafening sound bounces off the sheer rock faces until there's nothing but the noise and the man under Ethan's hands. Two fly cover while the last hovers over the courtyard, dropping three operators on fast ropes almost before Ethan can blink. They move with practiced ease, two of them laying open a net harness and getting Will and Ethan secured in it while the third checks Will over quickly, a small Maglite in his mouth throwing sharp, clear light on everything Ethan was too slow to keep from happening to Will. He replaces Ethan's makeshift bandages with an H-type, one of the compression bandages combat medics use for everything up to amputations, which at least means Ethan can stop putting all his weight directly on the wound; and then has the other operators hold off on starting the lift long enough for him to get an IV in Will's arm. 

"Sir," the medic shouts to Ethan as the others wave up to the Nighthawk and the rope goes taut. "I need you to hold this for me." He thrusts an IV bag of plasma in Ethan's hands. "Up," he gestures. "Above heart level." Ethan manages a thumbs up and then he and Will are in the air, the net they're cocooned in swinging enough that Ethan has to breathe consciously and fight down the nausea. About a third of the way up, they pass the ladders dropping down to the men still on the ground below; Ethan keeps his eyes on them as a point of reference and knows from how they tighten that the operators are on the way up before he and Will hit the halfway point. Clearly, this team is taking the operation seriously--they're going to be in and out in less than 30 minutes--and at the very least, it's a sign that the IMF isn't being shunned after the disavowment was reversed. 

Ethan expects Will to lose consciousness as they're pulled into the Nighthawk. There's no easy way to make that transfer happen, but as they hit the deck, Will's eyes blink open to meet his. "Made it," Ethan yells, which isn't exactly true--they still have three men coming up the ladders, and it's another eleven minutes until they clear Romanian airspace, let alone how much farther they need to go for an actual hospital--but they're a damn sight better than they'd been ten minutes earlier. Will nods infinitesimally.

Ethan's almost glad for the bag of plasma he's holding; he thinks it's the only thing keeping the rest of the team from separating him from Will, and if he needs to be close for reasons other than Will being his agent, his teammate, he will deal with that later. The Delta Force guys are practically hanging out of the helicopter to give them space to get Will down and his leg elevated as best they can. Somebody claps a headset over Ethan's ears and the sudden, relative quiet is such a relief he keys on the mike and gets them to do the same for Will. 

"Ethan," Will says, so faintly Ethan would think he'd imagined it if he hadn't been watching Will like a hawk. "Cold."

"Doc?" Ethan looks up at the guy wearing the insignia of the medical corps next to his Ranger's tab, to see if he heard Will, too, and what the fuck they can do about it. With his helmet and goggles off, he looks like he's about fourteen, but his hands are moving quick and competent over Will, checking his pulse and the wound like he deals with this every day. He probably does.

"It's the blood loss, a little," the kid says quietly. "Shock." Ethan probably shouldn't call him that no matter how smooth his face is, not with eyes as old as the ones he's assessing Will with. He digs around in his pack and shakes out a space blanket. "Plus, this shit," he taps the bag of plasma, "is chilled and it's not like we can turn up the heat in here."

They're all very valid points, and probably not really anything they can overcome, but Ethan can't just sit around and do nothing. He shifts until he can wrap himself around Will, putting his body between Will and the deck of the copter. Nobody so much as blinks--clearly, they all operate under the _whatever it takes_ motto, too. The corpsman even nods approvingly as he drops the space blanket over the two of them. 

"Your body heat can't hurt," he says, and then relays that they've cleared Romanian airspace and are gunning for a private hospital in Chernivtsi. 

"You hear that, Brandt?" Ethan says, more for his own sake than for actually expecting a response, but Will murmurs back, so Ethan keeps going. "Stay with me, yeah? We've got Kilimanjaro and the eclipse; what else do you have on tap?"

"'S all BS," Will says. "Not important, you know? Just sounds good."

"Yeah? What's important, then?" Ethan says it on auto-pilot, half his attention on where they are, how much longer it's going to be. He says it just to keep Will focused on something other than this whole clusterfuck, but even as the words leave his mouth he knows this isn't Will just playing along with Ethan's games. 

Will doesn't answer for a few long seconds, but Ethan has his hand wrapped around Will's wrist so he can feel his pulse, too fast and too shallow, but still there. Finally, Will says, "People. I had that, somebody, but I was messed up. After Croatia." His voice fades out, and all Ethan can think is how he can't fuck this up. Will is private, self-contained--he's committed to the team and Ethan knows they can trust him with their lives, but he's always stood apart, even after the full truths of Croatia and the protection detail had been communicated. This is as close as he's ever let Ethan get and Ethan is fully aware that it's mostly due to the shock and stress of the last few hours. He should be ashamed of the fierce emotion that surges through him, the possessive satisfaction he's taking in being the one who's hearing this, if only because of how much Will's been forced to take to get to this point, but he can't, not just yet. The best thing he can do, Ethan tells himself, is to be here, fully present for whatever Will needs to say. "He stuck around for a while," Will says finally, "but it turns out I'm a pretty mean drunk, just like the old man. Can't blame him for getting the hell out." 

This time when Will falls silent, Ethan knows he's finally out. Ethan doesn't move, though. There's too much ricocheting through his head. It's not a secret that Will carried a lot of guilt for Croatia, but it's an entirely different thing to hear explicitly how it had messed Will up, how it cost him more than just the field. And that doesn't even begin to touch the growing certainty that Ethan isn't thinking of Will as just another agent, not even one as important as Jane or Benji. 

The IMF has scrambled a squad to the hospital; when the Nighthawks touch down on the roof, they're met by a full medical team, and they're the only reason Ethan finally lets go of Will, pulling himself back out of the way to let them get to Will. He stays sitting there on the floor of the helicopter for an extra few seconds, everything--the climb, Will, everything--hitting him suddenly. 

"You okay, sir?"

"Yeah," Ethan says after a second. "Yeah, I'm good. Thanks, Doc," he tells the kid. He offers a more formal version to the strike team commander, but quickly, because they're clearly ready to be gone. He climbs down, too tired to care how awkwardly he lands, and is on his way to follow the medical team when Jane emerges from the second Nighthawk. She ducks her head under the rotors and runs to meet Ethan, waiting until the helicopters lift back off and the noise fades before saying anything. 

"Is he--?" She stops when she catches sight of the blood on Ethan's hands, his clothes.

"Alive." Ethan wishes he could offer more reassurance, but even if Jane couldn't see right through him, she deserves the truth. She stays still for the count of three, her eyes down, but when she looks up again, her face is calm, resolute. She nods once, and they turn to go start the wait for news.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "How very Ethan," Jane murmurs, rolling her eyes, and Will grins. It _is_ very Ethan, always looking for a way to push that extra bit more.

Will has owned the apartment for almost a decade, from before he even left the field. During the years he spent working his way up the ranks of analysts in the DC office, it was nothing but a place to be when he wasn't locked up in a secure office or on the road. Before that, it was a tax write-off. Now, it's become pretty much his entire world, and he finds himself grateful to the nosy, pushy real estate agent who hadn't let him settle for just anyplace all those years ago. It's small, but it faces south so it gets lots of light and, more importantly, it's in a great neighborhood, right off Connecticut in Kalorama, one that's easy to live in even with a slow-to-heal leg. It's a couple of blocks to the Metro and then a straight shot up the red line to the endless rounds of physical therapy, and a bit further the other way to Adams-Morgan and enough cafes that there's not much danger of starving due to lack of kitchen skills.

The only drawback is that the pre-World War II construction is hell on wi-fi and Will isn't quite up to ladders and drills to mount signal repeaters. Benji's on it, though. 

"They don't build 'em like this nowadays, my bleedin' arse," he's muttering as he breaks a second drill bit on the hard-as-stone plaster walls. Will surmises that his consultation with the building manager had not gone entirely to plan, but since Will is currently under orders from Jane to _sit the hell down and figure out how you want to organize your books_ he can't really say for sure. Jane's tearing through boxes like a Fury, and she's muttering to herself, too. Will thinks she's taking the fifteen boxes that have lived in the corner since the day he moved in and the correspondingly empty shelves a little too personally, as though he's ignored them so thoroughly he doesn't even see them now in order to insult her sense of order, but she's apparently very happy to fuck around with all the books he's never been able to make himself toss, so he's happy, too.

He is, he realizes. Happy. Or at least content, which sounds strange given that between the nerve tissue damage and the triple round of infections he's lucky to even have a leg that needs four hours a day, every day, of the hardest physical effort he's ever had to give and no guarantees about full mobility at the end of it all, but it's true. Somewhere between Moscow and now, he lost the death grip he had on his guilt and it's been slowly fading away. Maybe it's just that he doesn't have time for anything that's not right here, right now, not since he opened his eyes in a hospital in the Ukraine to find out everything that happened, Ethan more haggard than Will had ever seen, Jane clearly on a brittle edge, Benji a hoarse voice on the phone, but all of them there and willing to do whatever he needed. Maybe it's that his life now--with these people Will never gave a thought to letting into his carefully ordered days, but who are not only here, but take Will as an extension of themselves--leaves no room for ghosts. Whatever it is, for once in his life, he's not going to question it.

The doorbell buzzes right next to Benji's ear, three fast staccato bursts, startling him enough to break a third bit, and he slams the drill down in disgust. "Relax," Will says, as he pulls himself to his feet and reaches for his cane. "It's just Ethan here to drag me out on a forced march disguised as a neighborhood stroll."

"How very Ethan," Jane murmurs, rolling her eyes, and Will grins. It _is_ very Ethan, always looking for a way to push that extra bit more. 

"Fitness course at Rock Creek Park?" Ethan asks before he's two steps into the room. Will bites back a groan. It's been a good week--the cane has been more of an accessory than a necessity--but still doesn't mean he's in any kind of shape. Ethan's watching him with that Team Lead glint in his eyes, though, so Will leaves him to face Benji's wrath over the broken drill bit and goes to pull on the layers necessary for the combination of early November chill and Ethan pushing him to the edge. 

With the door to the bedroom closed, Will can only hear voices, not what's being said, but it doesn't matter. Will knows exactly what's going on, regardless: Ethan's harassing Benji, while Jane throws out comments until the tables turn and Ethan ends up defending himself. Again, it's all very Ethan, and maybe it's that he's only hearing tones and inflections, no distraction from the actual words, but it strikes Will that Ethan isn't easy like that with him. He comes over a couple of times a week, but always with a plan, never just to hang out, like the other two. 

Will stops for a second and turns that over in his mind, looking at it as objectively as possible. He honestly doesn't think he's imagining things. There's a distance between Ethan and himself, one that isn't there between the others, and one that Will can't attribute to his own issues and secrets. Before all this, maybe, but it's not that, not now. It could be their pattern, that how they started is how they're going to go on, but they'd been working past that, Will is sure of it. It's taken him longer than it should have to notice anything now, but now that he sees it, he not only sees how smoothly Ethan keeps his distance, but how hard he's been working to make that distance seem like nothing out of the ordinary. That right there, that last part, tells Will Ethan knows what he's doing. There are only a couple of reasons Will can think of that would set Ethan on that path, and none of them are things that are good for a team. Or a friendship.

The smart thing, of course, would be to let it alone, let Ethan be Ethan and see where they end up. Even if he keeps throwing the walls up, it won't really matter until they're back out in the field, and given that most days Will doesn't get far without a cane, that's not going to happen for a good six months yet. It's what makes sense for the team, which is what Will tells himself is the most important thing, but they're only a quarter of the way around the fitness course when he hears himself say, "They want me back at the home office, whatever time I can give them." Ethan hesitates for a second, no more than the smallest of hitches, one that he covers easily, but Will is looking for reactions now, so he sees it. He doesn't know what the hell it means, but the first part to solving an anomaly is to see it. "I start in a couple of days."

"If that's what you want," Ethan says, so carefully neutral he might as well be writing in neon about how he doesn't think it's a good idea. Will shrugs. 

"It'll give me something to do."

"This isn't them guilt-tripping you, is it?" Ethan drops the neutral act and turns that laser-focus on Will. It's better--it's _real_ \--but it's still unnerving. "Making it be about how you can be useful when your leg is all you--"

"It's true, though," Will interrupts, because the one thing he's sure of is that he's not letting Ethan derail this by talking about his damn leg. "I can be doing a hell of a lot more than sitting around staring at the walls."

Ethan looks at him for a long couple of seconds, before he says, "Yeah, okay, I'd be going nuts, too." Will snorts, because there's an understatement if he ever heard one. "But it's temporary," Ethan continues, "and we get first dibs on you when you're cleared for the field."

"If you want me," Will says, and there it is, no going back now .

"Why wouldn't I want you?"

"I don't know," Will says. "Why wouldn't you?" Possibly for the first time ever, Ethan is the first to look away. If Will had had any doubts about the conclusions he's been drawing, that quick, skittering shift of Ethan's eyes lays them all to rest. "Something's not right, and I have a couple of ideas, but I _don't know_ , Ethan, and I need to."

"Will--" Ethan starts, and Will knows the start of a dodge when he hears one, and now that he's started this, he's not letting it go. 

"It's all pretty fuzzy, what I have in here," Will taps the side of his head, "from Romania." None of the doctors seem all that stressed about it, all of them, from the shrinks to the neurologists agreeing that it's a normal reaction to the physical trauma. Will still loathes it almost as much as he hates seeing how little his leg can take these days. "It skips around a lot, lots of shit that I know couldn't possibly have happened, lots of holes where there's nothing, but..." Will takes a deep breath, lets it sigh out, and then just says it. "I'm pretty sure I came out to you, and I need to know if that's going to be an issue."

It's not often that Will knows he's thrown Ethan, but this time there's no doubt. Ethan stares at Will, close enough and still enough that Will can see the flecks of gray and green in his eyes. He recovers quickly, though. No surprise there. "Technically," Ethan says, shaking his head and letting one side of his mouth quirk up into a smile, "it was the Ukraine. We'd cleared Romanian airspace by then." His smile fades back to the serious, intent look. "That's not a problem. It wasn't a surprise--it's a part of your file."

Will shrugs again. Everything goes into the files these days--a legacy of the Cold War, when agents could be turned by a well-timed photo and the threat to make it public--and by the time IMF came calling Will had made a start on sorting his shit out, so, yeah, Ethan's right. It shouldn't have been a surprise, but that doesn't mean it hasn't been a problem before. 

"It's different when you hear it in person," Will says, as steadily as he knows how. Ethan's shaking his head before Will's even finished, and Will would be lying if he didn't acknowledge how much he wants to believe it's that simple. He knows it's not, though.

"It's _not_ a problem."

"Then what, Ethan?" Will stops right there in the middle of the path. "Because it's something, and it's not me this time."

"It's--I'm trying to do the right thing here," Ethan says, and honest to _christ_ , Will has no idea what the hell he's talking about. "Trying to think things through, not to just fly off--"

"So what you're telling me is that you picked _now_ to stop going with your gut?"

"You hate it when I do that!" 

"Seeing that it's saved my ass a couple of times, no, I don't _hate_ it," Will snaps. "It just... makes me crazy." 

"Fine," Ethan snaps right back, but then he takes a breath and Will can almost see him counting to ten. "I'm trying not to make you crazy," Ethan says, back to the carefully neutral tone again. Will is developing a healthy hatred for it. It's more aggravating than any ten wild plans and how fucked up is that? "You don't need that right now." 

"I need the truth," Will says. "No shit, Ethan. If this--" He waves at the path, at Ethan and himself-- "if this is some guilt thing, let's drop it, okay? I don't need to be an obliga--"

"Don't," Ethan says. "Do not go there. I-- Shit, I am not doing this out of _guilt_." There's an uncharacteristic edge in his voice, and Will has just enough time to see the reckless determination in his eyes before he's cupping one hand along the back of Will's head, holding him close. "No guilt," he breathes against Will's jaw, across his cheekbone, settling finally on his mouth, quick, feather-light touches that Will feels with every nerve in his body, and when Ethan starts to ease back, Will doesn't have to think before he's sliding his own hand up Ethan's back, keeping him right where he is. They're still for a couple of seconds until Will lets himself believe the truth he sees in Ethan's eyes and the last bit of tension sighs out of him. Ethan leans back and kisses him for real this time, opens Will's mouth with his own, tasting him and teasing him and staking a claim Will hadn't even realized existed.

Will has no idea how long they stand there, but when there's a small, tactful noise and they break apart to let a couple past them on the path, his hand is cramped and aching from where he's been leaning hard on his cane, and his leg is killing him. He looks at Ethan, his breath catching hard in his chest before it smooths out at the unchanged look in Ethan's eyes.

"No guilt," Ethan says, roughly. "And you coming out to me is really not an issue." He's flushed and breathless, his mouth swollen, and Will has to stomp down hard on the sudden desire to see how much farther he can push it. He wants to think it's coming out of nowhere, this possessive need, but he can't, not if he's being honest. It's always been there, but now it's come raging up to the surface, aided and abetted by Ethan himself, and quite nicely, Will adds, just to be fair. 

"Good," Will says, and then almost goes down when he forgets and puts a little too much weight on his damn leg. "Fuck, I need to sit down," he mutters. He manages to get to a bench without embarrassing himself, and looks up at Ethan, who is trying and failing not to hover. "Stop," he says, stretching his leg out and sighing at the relief. "I wasn't paying attention to how I was standing. No harm, no foul."

Ethan looks him over with narrowed eyes, like he's ready to call BS, but stands down after a couple of seconds. Will looks up at him and, deciding that there's no time like the present, lobs the metaphorical grenade. "Julia?"

"Is never going to be able to be in my life," Ethan says, dropping down on the bench next to Will. "I can't say she's not here," he says, but slowly, as though he's working through it for himself, too, "but we know the score." He leans forward, bracing his forearms on his thighs and turns his head so he can watch Will. Will watches him back, until Ethan says, "That's it? That's the only thing that's pinging your radar?"

"It's the only thing that matters," Will answers. "Yes, this is crazy and reckless, and whether or not I get back to the field, we have to tell Jane and Benji, but all that's nothing but logistics."

"Wow," Ethan says, with the beginning of a smirk. "No footnotes or disclaimers or over-think--"

"Shut up," Will says, dragging Ethan down and giving him something else to do with his mouth. Will initiating things apparently is all Ethan needs to go all out. When they come up for air this time, Will drags in a shaky breath and decides they have to move or they're going to give the Park Service a hell of a show. "C'mon," he says, and Ethan's right there with him, already on his feet and offering Will an arm up. He sets a pace on the way back that's only a tiny bit faster than Will would have set for himself--god forbid they not push it a little--but makes up for it with the hand low on Will's back as he weaves them around the running strollers and bikes on their way out on the trail. 

It's all incredibly domestic, right up to the point where they get to the car and there's a burner phone on the driver's seat. 

Ethan looks at it for a long few seconds, until Will nods at him to pick it up. Will turns away and reaches for his own cell, scrolling through his contacts for the cab company he uses when he's too beat to deal with the subway. 

"Ethan," he calls while he waits on hold. The messenger phone is already in the trash, a few wisps of smoke the only witness to its self-destruct, and Ethan is on his way back to the car. "Try really hard not to do anything too stupid."

Ethan's grin is as impossible as ever, but he nods with an unexpected seriousness. He looks at Will across the roof of the car, and Will doesn't know that he's ever seen him with so few defenses in place. He hopes he's returning it in kind. Ethan nods again, and he's gone, and Will takes a couple of seconds before he goes back to dealing with life.

"Yeah," he says into the phone. "Can I get a cab at the fitness course at Rock Creek Park? Local trip."


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wearing himself out day after day isn't the best plan Will has ever come up with, but he's defaulted to worse in his life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you've been reading along as I posted, the rating just bumped up to Explicit with this chapter.

They introduce Will as "Agent" Brandt and make a point of saying he's just helping out, as though Will is making a play for his old job and they want to be sure everyone is aware of where they owe their loyalty. Will's tempted to tell them to relax, that the only way he'll be back on their side of the fence is if he can't pass his physical, which he doesn't plan on allowing to happen. If it does work out that way, he'll be happy to show them how well he can play the game and how little their posturing really means. For now, though, he's there only to keep his brain from completely atrophying. And maybe a little to keep an eye and ear out for his team, but nobody needs to know that. 

Will has always liked the work--picking apart the fabric of the whole to follow the seemingly unrelated threads, weaving them together to cast events in a completely different light--and it does, if nothing else, give him something to focus his mental energy on. By the end of his first week, he has a standing meeting with the acting director--one of the former assistant directors he'd known in his earlier life on this side of the fence--to see how new intel fits with the data Will carries around in his head, faces and names and places that exist only in fragmented form elsewhere thanks to the disavowment. By the middle of the second week, the meetings are happening so often that the director begins sending a car and driver to collect Will from his physical therapy so they can take the meetings by video on the commute to the IMF offices. It fucks with Will's routine a little--it's a bitch flipping from the intense focus PT demands to the equally intense but purely mental effort of not missing that one detail that might make everything make sense--but the plus side of actually feeling useful again is worth the whiplash. 

Will is actually with the director when she takes the call that they've lost an entire team. She excuses herself immediately-- _you understand, Brandt_ \--and Will and his laptop are swept out of the discreetly opulent office and back to the desk he uses in the analysts' bullpen. The news has filtered down through the ranks; there's a palpable layer of somberness blanketing the room. No one knows anything for certain, of course--the agency will only confirm after they've dealt with any fall-out brought on by the mission failure--so the vaguest of details are fodder for the churn. Will gets it, he does. People need some outlet for the uncertainly, but he does _not_ need to deal with the gossip and the conjecture. He needs facts. Analysts generally don't work with any one team for exactly this reason, but if he needed any confirmation that he's stopped thinking like one of them, this is it.

He blocks out everything that's not verifiable and plugs in what he personally knows as true, and at the end of an hour, he's almost positive it's not his team down. There's no way he can know for sure, but he recognizes Benji's taste in surveillance electronics in one req, and he knows Jane's dress size and what designers work best to both showcase her stunning figure and hide the weapons she goes in with in another. Putting those two together and adding in an offhand remark by one of their pilots about a HALO drop in the South Pacific--which is pure Ethan, the crazy son of a bitch--and Will is as certain as he can be that it's not his team dead on the street in Tangier. 

It's still somebody's team, though, and that's never an easy thing to process.

There's an accident at Dupont Circle that has traffic so monumentally fucked up, and the Metro so overloaded, that Will walks the final ten blocks to his apartment. He'll pay for it the next day, but he can't take either the knowing, unspoken sympathy of the IMF driver nor the normal, impersonal press of the hundreds of civilians in the subway, all of them oblivious to the men and women who put their life on the line for that normalcy. 

Growing up a military brat on the standard rotation of USAF bases, with the odd naval air station thrown in for variety, Will has always thought he knew why, when a plane assigned to the base went down, the first thing every dependent did was listen for the phone, why the first thing every crewman did was reach for it. Even his father had the decency to pick up the phone and say _Not me_. In his too-quiet apartment, though, with no possibility of getting an equivalent call, Will finally understands the necessity of those calls for real, and he wonders how his mother and her friends didn't go insane. 

Between the somewhat ill-advised hike up Connecticut Avenue and a Vicodin from his stash, Will manages a semi-respectable night's sleep without resorting to other, more liquid, forms of coping, and is back in his routine with the rising sun. He re-doubles his efforts in PT, and spends all of his time at the IMF heads-down in bank records and wire transfer authorizations, all of which conveniently allow him to ignore the speculative looks thrown his way. Wearing himself out day after day isn't the best plan he's ever come up with, but he's defaulted to worse in his life. He's vaguely aware that he can't keep it up for forever, that he's going to crack and it's going to be a monumental bender this time, but before he can prove that right, an email appears in his secure inbox, nothing more than a airline ticket confirmation number for a flight leaving Dulles in less than two hours. 

Will looks at the screen for a long few seconds, not at all sure what to call everything that's crashing through him, but he can sort that out later. He shuts down his system and slips the laptop in his go-bag, calling the director's assistant to touch base with her on the way out of the building. They're already in the loop; somehow, Will is not surprised. Also unsurprisingly, there's an SUV and driver waiting for him at the front entrance, one that makes the trip out to Dulles in less than an hour, rainy Friday afternoon traffic notwithstanding. Will barely glances at the destination listed for the flight, only hands the TSA guy his boarding pass and passport and then goes through the shoes-laptop-suit jacket X-ray dance as efficiently as possible. The ticket is business class and he's spared a chatty seatmate--or maybe the other seat belongs to him, too. It's anybody's guess. He tucks his go-bag under the seat in front of him and sort of marvels at how his hands haven't been shaking at all. 

When the flight attendant asks, he deliberately goes for a Scotch, neat, and then nurses it through the relatively short flight to Freeport. It's mostly still in the glass when they collect the trash on their final approach; Will is going to take that as a positive. The car waiting for him this time is an open Jeep; the contrast between the cold and rain and tinted windows that he'd left in is so great Will can't believe it's anything but deliberate. There's a vague sense of being manipulated, even though he knows it's with the best of intentions, but it doesn't matter that he knows: it still works, the sun and wind scouring off layer after layer of the crap that's taken up residence in his psyche. By the time he's met by a smiling concierge, there's an easiness starting to take hold, one that he hasn't felt in longer than he cares to admit. 

The room the concierge shows him to is on an upper floor, with expansive views of the lush green of the resort landscaping giving way to the brilliantly-shaded water beyond. The shower is running, so Will thanks the concierge, shoves his laptop in the room safe, and leaves his cane in the corner. He investigates the mini-bar and, deciding that tempting fate with another Scotch seems like a poor decision, opts for a water and opens the sliding glass door out to the balcony. He manages to get his dress shoes and socks off, but stalls out after that, seduced by the view and the surprisingly comfortable chair right inside the doors. By the time the shower stops and Ethan walks out to join him, he thinks he might have lost another layer or two. 

"Hey," Ethan says, padding across the room, wearing nothing but a towel low in his hips, beads of water still sliding down his skin. He rubs a second towel over his hair, turning into a shaggy, wild mess that he rakes back away from his eyes, careless and easy. Will looks closely but doesn't see anything but the slightest shadow of a bruise over his ribs. "You're a little over-dressed." Ethan's gesture takes in Will's suit and tie, still knotted and relatively uncreased. "You want some help with that?"

Ethan steps up close and Will lets him push his suit jacket off his shoulders, but then stops him when he reaches for the tie. 

"Wait," Will says, giving in to the need to touch and fitting his hands to where the edges of the towel are caught on Ethan's hips. Ethan's skin is cool and damp against Will's. He stays still, like Will asked, a half-frown of concern on his face. Will drops his head to rest against Ethan's chest, breathing in slow and deliberate. "Waiting around for news fucking _sucks_ ," he mumbles.

"Tell me about it," Ethan agrees, and Will hears echoes of what Jane's told him about the endless couple of days in the Ukraine, days that don't exist for Will at all except for all the shit that he deals with every morning. "We heard about Tangier in debriefing on the way back."

"Yeah," Will says. Ethan touches him, a light brush of his fingers along the back of Will's neck and a little more of the tension leaches out of Will's shoulders. He turns his head so he can press a kiss along Ethan's ribs. Ethan shivers against him, and Will digs his fingers into Ethan's hips to keep him still enough for another kiss, and another. "Let me?" he breathes, tugging lightly on Ethan's towel, and smiling when Ethan makes a choked off sound that could be anything, but definitely means yes.

The towel comes off with one quick pull, and then Ethan is naked in front of him, his breath coming in a measured rhythm, while his hands move restlessly over Will's shoulders. Will smooths his own hands down over Ethan's hips, along his thighs, making sure to take his time. He's thought about this, about their first time, how it might go, what they might do, but now that its here, all he knows is that he's not rushing. He drops his head lower and mouths over the curve of Ethan's hip, stopping long enough to suck a bruise into the thin skin there, then bites quickly at the mark.

" _Fuck_ ," Ethan swears, but he's staying still, letting Will do what he wants, and Will can't think about that, absolutely cannot think about Ethan Hunt standing there and taking what Will gives him, or he'll lose it before he really even gets started. 

Will sits up, tips his head back so he can watch Ethan's face as he first touches his cock, strokes it to hardness. Ethan watches him back, his eyes darting between Will's face and his hands, and his breath speeds up, shallows out. He makes a low, soft noise when Will cups his balls, so Will spends some time there, kneading them gently, rolling them until Ethan's eyes slide closed and his hands are digging into Will's shoulders. 

"Ethan," Will says quietly. "Ethan, look at me." He stills his hands until Ethan drags his eyes open, and then says, "Do you want more? Do you want me to suck you?"

He expects a sarcastic comment or two, a snapped _Do it, Brandt_ , or at the very least a _Duh?_ , but Ethan only gasps, "Please. _Please_ ," and Will is helpless to resist. He leans forward again, this time to lick carefully across the top of Ethan's cock, learning what he likes, how he tastes. He takes his time here as well, dipping the tip of his tongue into Ethan's slit, pressing the flat of it along and under the crown, wrapping his lips around the head to suck lightly, then pulling off and starting again. 

Ethan is shaking against him, and Will is hard-pressed to remember the last time he's been so turned on without being touched himself. His own cock is hard and aching, but he ignores it in favor of relaxing his throat and taking Ethan as deeply as he can. He does it again, and then twice more, and Ethan moves, finally, a short, sharp snap of his hips that he stills almost immediately, and again, Will can't think about Ethan holding himself in check. He can't help moaning low in his throat, though, swallowing around Ethan as best he can before pulling off and gasping for air. 

"Ethan," Will says, and his voice is already a little rough, already a little used, and there's another thing Will has to let go. Ethan looks down at him and traces his thumb along Will's lower lip, closing his eyes and shuddering when Will sucks it into his mouth, biting down on the pad of it before he lets it slide free. 

Ethan lets him draw it out a little bit longer, but then Will looks up at him through his lashes, his mouth still wrapped around Ethan's cock and that's it for Ethan's control, his hands sliding up to knot tightly in Will's hair, his hips driving his cock deep into Will's mouth. It's _good_ , Will thinks, a brief flash of coherence that's swept away by the visceral reality of Ethan fucking his throat, one hard thrust after another after another, until Will can't breathe or see or feel anything else, until Ethan is all Will knows, all he wants to know. 

That doesn't change even after Ethan comes. Before Will catches his breath, Ethan is pulling him to his feet, pulling him close enough that he can feel Ethan's heart beating fast and hard against his own chest. Ethan cups Will's face in his hands and kisses him like he's renewing the claim he laid in the park, long and slow, licking the taste of his come out of Will's mouth. After a while--Will isn't sure if it's two minutes or twenty, he lets go of Will, but only to start stripping him slowly, tie and shirt unknotted and unbuttoned, warm hands sliding up under his t-shirt to stroke along the skin of Will's back, his belly, laying new claims on top of the ones he'd made the last time they'd been together. 

Will's breath catches hard in his throat as Ethan turns his attention to his belt, and then the button and zipper on his pants. Ethan moves deliberately, as though he doesn't want to rush either, but it only takes a few more seconds before Will is naked, too, Ethan's hands moving proprietorially over his ass and thighs before he takes Will's cock in a firm, sure grip that is all about making sure Will understands that there's a claim on it, too. Will closes his eyes, not to shut Ethan and his focus out, but to draw his own inward, to let go of everything that's not Ethan's hands on his body, Ethan's mouth on his jaw, his neck. Ethan learns him better with each stroke, finds out exactly where to touch to make Will shudder, how hard to touch to make him moan. 

Will likes it rough, likes it so that it hurts almost as much as it feels good. It's not that hard to find guys who will go that way, but Ethan takes him head on and lets him lose himself in it without hesitation. Will hears himself from a distance, a low gasping litany of _yeahfuckpleasemore_ as Ethan slaps Will's cock lightly back and forth between his hands, testing his limits, taking everything Will knows how to give him, holding him safe and pressing him further than he's ever been. 

"More?" Ethan asks, again and again, waiting for Will to say it, say _please_ , making him ask for it a little more desperately each time, until Will breaks and sobs for it. "Good boy," Ethan murmurs, and gives it to Will, drags his nails the length of Will's cock, harder still across the head, and makes Will come with an almost soundless scream. 

Will holds on to Ethan mindlessly, his hands hard around Ethan's arms, a solid point of contact in a world gone fragmented and chaotic, doesn't let go even when there's a bed under him and he doesn't have to keep himself vertical, even when he's back in his body enough to know it's Ethan blanketing him, one leg thrown possessively over Will, murmuring slow words against Will's skin, so quiet Will's not even sure he's supposed to hear them. 

Neither one of them is in a place where they sleep well, especially not having another person in the bed, but every time Will jolts awake, it doesn't take long to remember and the sound of the ocean and the feel of Ethan next to him drop him back into sleep.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The evening's potential is definitely on the upward trend, Ethan thinks, watching Will make his way across the floor to where Ethan's standing at the bar.

"...and, we're clear," Benji says over comms, and Ethan knows he isn't the only one who's stifling a sigh of relief that this op has gone off exactly as intended, with their team nothing but back-up. Not even Plan B, more like Plan F or G, so far down as to be nothing more than window dressing for the alpha team. Of course, they're only here because the previous back-up team had run into their own Plan G, so they were all still on their game but at least they haven't had to do anything but stand around the casino and blend in. "Breaking down the van and heading for extraction," Benji says. "Catch you at the motherhouse."

"Ditto," Jane murmurs in Ethan's ear. Out of the corner of his eye, he catches sight of the swirl of sapphire blue that's this evening's gown, already halfway out of the main hall. They've done three quick, sharp ops in a row, no downtime between them at all, and then came straight into this with no prep; Ethan's already informed the director's office that they're only to be brought online in the case of World War III or the potential for a global pandemic , so he only says, "Save us some of the good coffee at debrief."

"That depends entirely on how annoying the paperwork turns out to be," Jane says, and then she's gone, too, and it's down to Ethan and Will and Monte Carlo in August.

The evening's potential is definitely on the upward trend, Ethan thinks, watching Will make his way across the floor to where Ethan's standing at the bar. He moves easily, no sign of the eight months of rehab it had taken to dig back out from under everything the Romanian mission had dumped on him. He's never going to be one hundred percent back to where he'd been before, but he's closer than any of them--especially Will himself--had realistically expected. He doesn't have the explosive power he once had, or the quick reversals, but what he does still have is honed to an edge so sharp there are times that even Ethan, who's sparred with him so often it's like he's an extension of Ethan himself, doesn't see a hit coming before it's put him on the mat.

"You're staring," Will says in a long-suffering tone, coming up to lean on the bar next to Ethan. He nods to the bartender for a tonic and lime, projecting a very credible air of jaded boredom, except for the lightest of flushes high across his cheekbones.

"Enjoying the view," Ethan corrects, smiling as that color deepens. He doubts anyone in the room--hell, in the city--would notice, but it's like a blinking neon sign between them.

"Is that all you're planning on enjoying tonight?" Will casually removes his earwig, dropping it in the pocket of his dinner jacket. Ethan follows suit, a low hum of _Private Now_ starting up in his head. It's Will's turn to smile, as though he knows exactly what Ethan's thinking. Knowing Will, he does.

"They say you can't come to Monte Carlo and not play baccarat," Ethan says. He's come up with better banter, but it's been a long month and he's more than a little distracted by all the little things he doesn't let himself see when he and Will are together but working, the flex of Will's throat when he swallows, the curve of his hand as he cradles the solid, heavy glass, the perfect fit of his dinner jacket across his shoulders.

"Of course," Will murmurs gravely, just low enough that Ethan has to lean in a bit to hear him, and his smile--intimate, indulgent, for Ethan alone--pulls Ethan closer still for all that he recognizes the play. "Is that the game you want tonight, Ethan?"

He says it lightly, but with unexpectedly serious eyes, and Ethan reaches for his drink, takes the extra few seconds that finishing off the Scotch gives him to make sure he's reading Will right. There's the game on offer, of course--Will as seducer, Ethan as seduced--and they've played it before, both ways, with great attention to detail and commensurate explosiveness. There's more in Will's eyes, though: anything Ethan wants, if Ethan has it right, and not just any game, but any _thing_. Everything.

"No," Ethan says, just as quietly, just as intimately. "No games tonight." Will's smile slides into something true and open, and the difference is spectacular in its promise. Ethan finally makes himself look away just long enough to catch the bartender's eye, and as quickly as he signs for the drinks, Will is still managing to communicate how beyond impatient he is to be done with the public part of the evening. Ethan blames that for how he finds himself out of the casino and waiting for the car to be brought around with no clear memory of how they got there, only the certain knowledge that he's had his hand on Will--on his shoulder, his arm, low on his back--the entire time. It would bother him, except that the part with Will is the important part of the trip, and he can't bring himself to care about the rest.

"We're in Monte Carlo and there's no Ferrari, Ethan?" Will quirks an eyebrow at him as the car arrives. "Who knew you could exercise such restraint?"

Ethan opens his mouth to point out that it's not only his idea half of the time, that Jane is every bit as bad as he is when it comes to the cars, and Benji and even Will himself are ridiculous about the electronic toys, but the way Will is smiling at him is worth any amount of needling, so he only points out that it _is_ a '61 Alpha, restored to perfection, right down to the proper grade of leather for the seats. "She's a classic--I thought you of all people would know that surface gloss isn't everything, Brandt."

"So, what you're saying is that they stuck you with it," Will says. There's a certain level of glee in his eyes--completely unprofessional in Ethan's estimation, no matter that his assessment is entirely correct. 

"They had no idea what they were giving away," Ethan answers, with as much dignity as possible. He shifts the transmission into gear and whips out of the curved drive in front of Le Grande Casino, the engine growling like the race car she'd been in her first life. The road runs down along the coast, sheer drop to the ocean on one side, rocky outcroppings on the other. Ethan keeps his focus on the pavement in front of them, rocketing through the twists and turns almost before the headlights can pick them out. The speedometer inches up and holds steady to the right of 100, one long swooping run until he has to ease off as they get into town, and when he looks over, Will is laughing at him.

"You're so _easy_ , Hunt," Will says, but he drops his hand on top of Ethan's on the stick shift and leaves it there until they get to the Hermitage and he has to let go to get out of the car.

*

They're in a room, not a suite, which would have been problematic if they'd needed to cram the entire team in--Ethan really doesn't give a shit if it _is_ August in Monte Carlo or that they were a last minute addition to the mission, somebody needs to be paying better attention to logistics--but since Benji and Jane are probably halfway to Charles DeGaulle and their flights, it's less of an issue. It still feels small, though, even with just Will and Ethan. They edge around each other in a dance that they're still working out no matter that they've been practicing it for months. Ethan flips idly through the room service menu while Will goes through his end-of-the-day routine, emptying his pockets and dropping his cufflinks on the dresser, both of them letting the adrenaline and tension of a mission fade a little and seeing what's left under it. The room is done up in a style that would have Jane rolling her eyes at the excess of it all, but the balcony overlooks the harbor, the wind fresh off the water and the lights of Monte Carlo spread out around them. Ethan's not at all surprised that they end up out there, both of them leaning on the railings, still too wired to actually sit at the small table, but coming down a little at at time. They've been pushing right to the edge for the last few weeks, Ethan thinks. They're lucky this last thing turned out to be nothing.

It's quiet until Will unexpectedly shakes shakes his head and says, "Hell of a difference from a year ago."

"Three hundred and sixty-eight days," Ethan corrects without thinking, but it's been on his mind, especially lately.

"Not that you're counting," Will says dryly.

Ethan shrugs, because yes, he _has_ been keeping count, right from the very start, from when it'd been a day, and the doctors weren't saying anything; and then a week, and they were talking about white blood cell counts and restraints that were necessary due to the fever-induced hallucinations; and then a month, and the only good news was that they hadn't had to amputate, but no one was making any promises about rehab. He doesn't say anything, though, because for all they might yell at each other daily, the only real fight they've ever had, ugly and vicious and cruel, might have been about the difference between Ethan's gut and Will's planning on the surface, but underneath it was Ethan's need to fix things and Will's need to be more than something to be fixed. Ethan is still amazed--and grateful--that they not only got past it far enough to be able to work together, but also to know that whatever it is between them goes deep enough to have taken what should have been a critical flaw and forged it into something strong enough to let Will turn his head now and accept Ethan's kiss.

Ethan is almost positive it's something strong enough to take on the information on the flash drive in his pocket, too, the one that was couriered to him right as they got the call for this mission. He can't not give it to Will, but that doesn't mean he doesn't wish it had missed them in Bangkok and that he didn't officially know it existed right this second, especially not with how Will is watching him, as though he knows there's something going on.

"You should see this," Ethan says, dropping the drive into Will's palm. For a brief second, he thinks Will might put it away and deal with it later, but that's patently ridiculous, complete wishful thinking. Anyone who knows Will Brandt knows that, so Ethan isn't at all surprised when Will nods once and reaches for the small data reader they all carry. Ethan makes himself take a step back and say, "I'm gonna..." He gestures toward the bathroom and the overwrought shower. Will nods, guarded now, but if Ethan has learned anything in the last few months, it's that they do much better if he gives Will some space.

There is, thankfully, no lack of boiling hot water. That's never a guarantee after a mission, so Ethan gets himself into the shower and lets the high pressure jets beat down on him. The files are detailed financial statements of everyone the IMF could find involved with the cartel, every single one of them showing complete reversals in the last year. The three most powerful, the ones who'd been holding the leashes of the thugs in Romania, are completely ruined. One of them already put a bullet through his brain; the other two probably won't last the year without the funds to run their own personal armies. A year ago, Ethan would have thought he'd be setting off fireworks at the news, but now, he's mostly just focused on Will, and he has no idea what seeing the news will bring down on him. Ethan doesn't think there's any kind of closure to be gained, but maybe it's one less thing Will has to expend energy on.

There are a half-dozen scenarios Ethan can see playing out, some worse than others; having Will walk into the bathroom already half-undressed and stripping off the rest of his clothes with every step is one Ethan really hadn't even let himself entertain as possible.

"Hey," Ethan murmurs as Will presses up close behind him. Ethan braces himself on the wall and takes as much of Will's weight as he'll allow, and it's hard not to think about that night and the increasing heaviness of Will against him.

"Hey." Will drops his forehead down to rest against Ethan's back, right at the base of his neck, and Ethan loses track of how long they stay like that. Will doesn't lift his head when he says, "All the shit I can't remember, and then clear as day, I know one of the bodies. His _mother_ probably wouldn't recognize what's left of him, but my fucking brain decides it's time to work again." The cartel had finally figured out what the destruction raining down on them had been tied to; one of the files has photos of what was left of the low-level grunts who'd taken Will, their bodies left out as a last-ditch offer of appeasement.

"What do you need?" Ethan asks. He wonders if it'd be appropriate to describe this moment to the IMF shrinks, the ones who've spent the last few months repeating, through clenched teeth on several occasions, that _asking_ is far better than presuming to know and a hell of a lot less condescending at the same time. They were right and he was wrong and knowing that he's actually helping now is enough to wash away most of his irritation. The rest would be helped immeasurably by being able to mention he'd put their advice into practice while naked.

"Fuck if I know," Will mumbles, and Ethan is moving, turning around so he can face Will, before he even thinks about it, because he may have finally gotten the idea through his head that he needs to back off, but he still has limits and the defeated tone in Will's voice has him so hard up against them he can barely breathe.

"Okay," Ethan says. "I'll just... wing it from here." Will huffs out a small, but real-sounding laugh, at which point a metric fuckton of weight rolls off Ethan's chest. "Sound off if I screw up."

"Have at it," Will says, tipping his head back under the spray and letting Ethan move him around to take proper advantage of the waterfall shower. Ethan doesn't really intend anything beyond another point of contact when he brushes a kiss across Will's collarbone, but Will makes a small, pleased noise and pulls Ethan closer. He studies Ethan for a few seconds before he kisses him, careful and deliberate, as though he's reminding himself of all the things he knows Ethan likes while the water beats down on them. "Bed," Will finally says, and they half fall out of the shower trying to move that way without stopping the kisses.

The door to the balcony is still open, and the air moving in off the water is winning out over the air conditioning. It's warm enough that Ethan knows it's not temperature that's making Will shiver against him. He lays Will out on the bed and crawls up over him, taking his time just because he can, because it's just him and Will in this world. He has the time to kissbite a small bruise on top of Will's collarbone, and another under his jaw, and take even more to tease at his nipples, the inside of his thighs. Will lies back and lets Ethan set the pace, kissing Ethan when he can, ghosting his hands over Ethan's arms and shoulders and sides if he can reach. His breath shudders out in a not-quite moan when Ethan licks across the head of his cock, and he threads his fingers through Ethan's hair, but only to hold on, as though he needs an anchor. Ethan takes his time there, too, sucking Will until he's writhing under Ethan, legs spread wide and head thrown back, before Ethan sits back and reaches for the small bottle of lotion.

Will never looks away as Ethan spills some of it over his hand, and when Ethan reaches back to open himself up, Will hums low in his throat and leans up enough to kiss Ethan hard. Ethan knows he's thinking about the last time they fucked, too, before this round of missions, when Ethan had sat on the edge of their bed, watching Will undress, playing along with Will's quiet _No touching_ even as Will, on his hands and knees, had fingered himself until he was ready to take Ethan's cock.

"Slow," Will says against Ethan's mouth, which is exactly what Ethan had said to him that last time, too. Ethan nods, and Will kisses him again, swallowing down the desperate noise Ethan makes when he feels Will's fingers teasing at him, blunt nails catching on his rim even as he's scissoring his own fingers, stretching himself wide. It's almost unbearably intimate, even before Will presses his own fingers in alongside Ethan's and Ethan's hips stutter at the sudden burn.

There are times when the sex between them is all about wearing down the jagged edges left after a mission, a challenge thrown down to see who can hold out the longest, who can break whom, how much energy they can dissipate before they crash. There are other times when it's to prove they're alive and whole, not so beaten up by their lives that they can't drive each other to the brink of insanity. Those are the times when they come away scratched and bitten and bruised, every mark a promise made and fulfilled. There are jagged edges waiting to be smoothed here, and more than a little proof of life needed, but the only challenge is how close they press themselves, how long they can stay together.

Will holds tight to Ethan's hips, forcing him to take Will's cock slowly, each fraction of an inch claiming Ethan that much more, until Will is so deep inside him Ethan loses track of where he ends and Will begins. He leans forward enough that Will can kiss him, the soft, cool kisses a head-spinning contrast to the heat and hardness inside him. Even when Will lets go of Ethan's hips, Ethan doesn't move, and they stay still, balanced in and around each other, breathing the same air until they're dizzy.

"Ethan," Will says, rough and lazy, and Ethan manages an affirmative sort of noise, one that slides into a low moan as Will wraps his hand around Ethan's cock. "I want to feel you come like this." He strips Ethan's cock with an unhurried rhythm, firm and sure for all its aching slowness, and Ethan's left shaking, caught between Will's hand on his cock and Will's cock in his ass, nothing to do but press closer to Will and take it, let Will's hand, his cock build on each other, forcing Ethan higher, higher, until it sweeps over him in a flash, one wave after another after another. Ethan has just enough presence of mind to stay upright through it all, ride it out and bring Will along with him.

*

Not unexpectedly, Will dreams almost constantly during what's left of the night, jerking awake already fighting time after time. Ethan thinks they get maybe an hour of sleep before the sun rises. Will is prickly and withdrawn, but he only rolls his eyes when Ethan wants to take the car out one last time, and later, when they're boarding the plane, he doesn't bitch when Ethan insists on taking the aisle seat so that he's between Will and the rest of the world.

"Subtle, Ethan," he says, but Ethan doesn't miss how his hand is always somewhere on Ethan, or how he ignores the pillow the flight attendant brings him in favor of Ethan's shoulder; and Ethan certainly doesn't miss that once he falls asleep, it only takes Ethan saying his name to soothe him back down when he wakes.


End file.
